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Forgiveness Quotes

Muhammad leads, followed by Shakespeare, Jesus, Julian of Norwich and the comics writer J. M. DeMatteis. The sourced poems are the ones to read. Alexander Pope’s The Universal Prayer (1738) asks that the mercy we show others be shown to us. Philip James Bailey’s Festus (1839) says they who forgive most shall be most forgiven. Wordsworth’s lines on Sweet Mercy are from his 1803 Scottish tour.

The one flagged entry is “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission,” credited to the computer scientist Grace Hopper and marked misattributed. The notes list several print sources from the 1980s, among them a 1986 Navy magazine.

Random quote on Forgiveness

Most quoted on forgiveness:

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.

Peter Ustinov BBC obituary (2004)

And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.

William Blake Poems from Blake's Notebook (1804)

Do not feel ashamed to forgive and forget.

Ali

Forgiveness: Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.

Marlene Dietrich Marlene Dietrich's ABC (1962)

Only by presupposing God's prior and inconceivable forgiveness can the limitations of human good will be transcended, and only thus can the danger of human pride be avoided.

Hans Urs von Balthasar Love Alone Is Credible (1963)

Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic. (307)

Ramakrishna Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)

The moment I realised that I was dealing with a mechanism whose participants were its prisoners, at that moment I was able to take distance from what had happened, and forgiveness started to become possible.

James Alison Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001)

War forgets peace. Peace forgives war. War is the death of the life human. Peace is the birth of the Life Divine. Our vital passions want war. Our psychic emotions desire peace.

Sri Chinmoy Songs of the Soul (1971)

As I rejected amnesty, so I reject revenge. I ask all Americans who ever asked for goodness and mercy in their lives, who ever sought forgiveness for their trespasses, to join in rehabilitating all the casualties of the tragic conflict of the past.

Gerald Ford

Let me say before I go any further that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell and in the execrable generations to come an honoured name.

Samuel Beckett Malone Dies (1951)

Sandalwood perfumes even the axe that hurls it down! The more we rub sandalwood against a stone, the more its fragrance spreads. Burn it, and it wafts its glory through the entire neighbourhood. Such is the enchanting beauty of forgiveness in life.

Chinmayananda Saraswati

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Grace Hopper Misattributed

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

John F. Kennedy Attributed Mayor (1984)

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Attributed Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much humbled.

Thomas Brooks Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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